‘Looper’ trailer: Joseph Gordon-Levitt completes time-travel circle

After three days of what is becoming a new trend in Hollywood advertising – trailers for a trailer – Apple.com unveiled the first official teaser for time travel movie “Looper.” The action flick stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and is directed and written by Rian Johnson, who introduced the film in three vignettes that counted down to Thursday’s preview release.

The film looks to be a time-jumping, mind-twisting thriller with Gordon-Levitt portraying a contemporary hit man working for clients 30 years in the future – they send the victims, bound and hooded, back through time for a “quiet” disposal. Where things get complicated is when his next victim turns out to be his future self, played by Bruce Willis.

To look more like Willis, Gordon-Levitt spent three hours in makeup each morning, altering parts of his appearance, most notably his eyebrows, lips and eye color.

“It kind of freaked Bruce out,” the actor said in the third vignette on Apple.com. He also told fans at WonderCon in Anaheim last month that a close friend who visited the set was so unsettled by his slightly altered appearance that the friend avoided spending much time around him.

In another of these vignettes, Johnson called the movie “very gritty, grounded action sci-fi” and compared it with Willis’ 1995 time travel movie “Twelve Monkeys.” Gordon-Levitt said the new film is “sort of a down-to-earth ‘Blade Runner’… it feels real. It’s that style of sci-fi that could actually exist in 30 years.”

Watch the teaser below to see for yourself whether the new film could stack up to those two sci-fi greats.

“Looper” marks a reunion for Gordon-Levitt and Johnson, who first teamed up on 2006 neo-noir film “Brick.” There’s good reason to hope “Looper” won’t be their last collaboration, as Johnson said at the WonderCon panel moderated by Hero Complex’s Geoff Boucher, “I hope to be working with this guy for the rest of my life.”